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x Virginia State Library are preserved the Winder, MacDonald, and Sainsbury Papers, twenty-two quarto volumes, containing either exact copies or very full abstracts of all the documents in the British Public Record Office relating to the same century. In the same depository are the Reports of the Royal Historical Manuscripts Commission, and the Calendar of Virginia State Papers, the earlier volumes of which, edited with great care and learning by Dr. William P. Palmer, throw the most important light on the Colonial Age. Mr. Alexander Brown&rsquo;s noble collection of private and public documents in his Genesis of the United States, a collection which will always be a monument to his patience, industry, and scholarship; the Works of Captain John Smith as edited by Professor Arber; and the Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, published by the Virginia Historical Society, have furnished me invaluable information in the investigation of the condition of the people in the first decades of the century. Largely owing to the scholarly care of Mr. Charles Poindexter, late State Librarian, the collection of tracts bearing upon the history of Virginia throughout that whole period, now in the State Library at Richmond, is one of the most complete to be found in this country, and upon this collection I have drawn to very great advantage. A complete list of all the authorities used in the preparation of this work, with the special editions consulted, will be found appended.

An exhaustive chronological history of Virginia in the Colonial Age has never been written, and this is also true